


and the worst part is, that life goes on without you

by Ellisama



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: 5+1 Things, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-15 01:15:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21245111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellisama/pseuds/Ellisama
Summary: “Father?” He calls out one more time, this time drawing his attention. When their eyes meet, it is as if his father is looking right through him.“G-glenn?” Rodrigue asks with a shaky, lifeless voice.The world narrows down to the two of them, and Felix realizes that he isn’t seeing him at all. He stumbles back a step, his eyes wide and chest heaving. If his father had hit him and broken all of his ribs, he imagines it would have hurt less than the pain he feels now.---Or; Five times people mistake Felix for his brother, and one time it’s him.





	and the worst part is, that life goes on without you

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by beautiful, agonizing art by Whimsycottt, go see and reblog it here: https://whimsycottt.tumblr.com/post/188251710230/inktober-is-killing-me-guys-hahaha-i-see-felix
> 
> This fic is dedicated to Abby, Ari and Haley (you know who you are). Thanks for making this game so much more fun with our endless conversations, theories and ideas, and for not spoiling anything despite the fact that I finished the game last. I hope this fic makes you cry those good tears.

**1\. (Denial)**

Felix is 5 years old and his mother is dying of an illness nobody can cure. She holds his hand, but it’s not the same strong grip that taught him how to hold a sword. Every day she looks a bit less like the mother he grew up with, but that doesn’t stop Felix from sitting next to her for a few minutes every day to tell her about his lessons.

Some days she recognizes him, and some days she doesn’t. Today is not a good day.

“Glenn…?” Her voice is barely above a whisper when she looks him in the eyes and calls his brother’s name. “Glenn, please, get your f-father. I need…. I _ need… _.” Whatever she needs, her deep coughing drowns it out. When she finally lifts her hand from her mouth her lips are coated with deep red blood.

His stomach lurches at the sight. “It’s just me, mommy. Felix!” He pleads, hands trembling and aching to be held. Glenn keeps telling him he shouldn’t cry so much, but he can’t stop the tears from pooling up and falling down his cheeks. Not when his mother is sick and bleeding. 

She reaches for him and wipes away a stray tear, leaving a trail of blood in its stead. “Y-you’re right, I’m sorry baby…,” his mother says with a soft smile that doesn’t erase the hazy look in her eyes. “Please don’t c-cry. I’ll soon get better, and we… we c-can practice with your sword t-together,” she promises him.

She’s weak, and even though his brother and father refuse to look him in the eye and tell him the truth he _ knows _she’s not getting better. Still, his mother has never lied to him before, and he so desperately wants to believe her. 

“Promise?” Felix asks with a strangled voice.

His mother’s smile is bloody. “P-promise…”

She quickly falls back into slumber after that and Felix summons his father despite the fact that his mother asked Glenn to do it instead of him. Next time she will recognize him for sure, Felix thinks when he shuts the door behind him.

She doesn’t.

In the end, his mother doesn’t keep her promise either. There are no more good days after that and before long there aren’t any days left at all. They bury her on a rainy Thursday, mere weeks before Cornelia’s miracle cure saves the other victims of the plague. 

Felix visits her grave on the days of her birth and death, and doesn’t ever think of their last conversation.  
  
  


** **2\. (Bargaining)** **

Felix is thirteen years old and Glenn is dead, all that remained of him to bury next to their mother his armor and sword.

Yesterday after the funeral his father took him to his study. Felix expected to be held, to be lifted up and told that everything would be alright like his father did after his mother was buried. Instead, his father had looked at him solemnly and told him that instead of mourning him, he should feel pride. That Glenn died the death of a true knight.

Suddenly, he had no more tears left to cry then but suddenly it had seemed like a volcano erupted in the pit of his stomach and the rage that poured from it was never-ending. The things he said were not nice to say the very least. But Felix didn’t feel like being nice for once. In the end, the conversation had been reduced to screaming, and with a guttural roar Felix had stormed out.

That was a few hours ago and although the anger is far from gone, the cold hard reality is far more frightening. Terrible images of Glenn being consumed by flames haunt his dreams even while he is awake. His first instinct was to go to Glenn’s room and climb into his bed until the nightmares are gone. But Glenn is gone, and Felix will never again be able to run to his brother when he felt sad or scared. It is just his father and him now. 

With that thought in mind, he swallows his pride and searches for his father for comfort instead. He finds him where he left him, in his study. Felix knocks on the door and waits, but nobody answers. He can hear his father talking to someone, his voice thick in a way Felix can’t recall hearing before, but he can’t quite make out the words.

The hallway is cold and he has never been one for patience. When his father doesn’t respond after the third knock, he opens the door, and asks: “Father?”

His father doesn’t even notice he’s there. His eyes are bloodshot and there is more than one empty bottle of wine on his desk. Another one lies broken on the floor, a red spot staining the wall right above it. For a second Felix just stands there in the door opening, waiting for his father to acknowledge him.

“Father?” He calls out one more time, this time drawing his attention. When their eyes meet, it’s as if his father is looking right through him. 

“G-glenn?” His father asks with a shaky, lifeless voice. 

The world narrows down to the two of them, and Felix realizes that he isn’t seeing him at all. He stumbles back a step, his eyes wide and chest heaving. If his father had hit him and broken all of his ribs, he imagines it would have hurt less than the pain he feels now. The anger flares up all at once and then dies out a cold, icy death.

(Unlike Felix and his mother, Glenn and Rodrigue preferred the lance over the sword. There are other things his father prefers over him as well.)

“No, just me, you pitiful old man,” he snarls back, turning around before his father can react and see the hot, traitorous tears that spring from his eyes. He slams the door closed with all the power of his Major Fraldarious Crest, and stomps back to his own bed. 

_ I was wrong before, _ he thinks to himself bitterly. _ It’s just me left. _

He never lets anyone see him cry again after that.

  
  
  


**3\. (Anger)**

He’s seventeen and studying at Garreg Mach. Felix doesn’t think of his mother when he practices the katas she taught him first. He doesn’t think of his future as heir now that his brother his dead. He doesn’t speak to his childhood friends, all twisted beyond recognition from the children they once were, by tragedy and archaic values.

There is nothing he likes more than training because when he moves he and his sword are one. Swords don’t _ feel _, they just cut through their problems and move on to their next task.

_ (“What do you want to be, after you graduate?” Professor Byleth asked him once after class. She laughed when he told her he wanted to be a sword, even though it was an honest answer.) _

He makes an effort to be mean to everybody he meets, lest they try to be friends and bother him. One Ingrid is enough, thank you very much. Normally, people are easily dissuaded from approaching him with a few glares, but Cathrine is not one of these people.

Felix doesn’t know if that makes him respect her, or hate her.

After attempt number eight to make her stop staring at him, he unexpectedly lunges towards her with a swift uppercut of his sword. As expected she blocks without issue, her grin infuriating him even further. 

“What do you _ want _?” He grits out between his teeth.

“Oh, nothing,” she says nonchalantly. “You just reminded me of Glenn, back when we studied here together. You looked just like him, just now.”

The mention of his brother’s name is enough to make him clench his fists until his palms bleed from his fingernails cutting into his skin. This time, Catherine isn’t fast enough to avoid the fist flying towards her. She quickly steps back to negate most of the impact, but Felix still feels satisfied that he wiped that look of pity right off her face.

There are a thousand questions in his mind, but none of them matter. Instead, he raises himself to his full height, looks her straight in the eye and declares: “Get your eyes checked. I am Felix Hugo Fraldarius. There is no one else.”

Catherine shrugs at that, seemingly unaffected, but she leaves him alone after that. Felix is too familiar with the sound of his heart breaking to be distracted by it and instead funnels all the pain he feels back into his training until he and the blade are one.

His father may be a shield, his brother may have been a knight. But Felix is a sword, and weapons don’t weep. 

**4\. (Acceptance)**

He’s eighteen years old and the world as he knows it is falling apart at his feet. The monastery is under attack by a former-classmate-turned-emperor, the archbishop turns out to be a dragon and the professor is nowhere to be found. A hundred knights of Seiros draw their swords for a battle they have no hope of winning, and Felix is among them despite his best efforts not to. With no hope of salvation or victory in sight, Seteth calls for them to retreat. Felix ignores his orders and keeps fighting anyway, following the boar prince gone mad on his thunderous rampage. 

That is until a stray arrow hits Ingrid’s while she’s mid-air, and he loses sight of Dimitri to see her fall from the sky, screaming her lungs out.

He pushes back the thought that it might be the last time he sees her alive, and instead puts all his training to good use and sprints towards her at a breakneck speed. He’s not in time to catch her _ (he never is) _ but at least she is still alive when he drags her from underneath the corpse of her beloved pegasus.

He isn’t built for raw strength - not like the Boar - but he manages to hoist her onto his back purely on willpower and adrenaline. Shaking and panting, he looks around for his classmates. All he sees is the steady approach of more empire soldiers, drawing ever closer.

“Dammit, where is everyone?!” He cries out in frustration.

“A-ah” Ingrid stirs back to life at the sound of his voice, and Felix releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding, knowing she’s still alive. The joy is shortlived when she speaks again. “G-glenn? Is that you?”

His heart stops beating for a second and he almost drops her. He opens his mouth to retort, but the cutting words that usually come so easily die in his throat.

Ingrid’s voice is uneven. “Glenn, please help. I’m so scared,” she pleads desperately, clinging weakly to him.

Around them the sounds of marching men and imminent slaughter drown out all else. Felix closes his eyes, takes a deep breath and tries to remember what his brother sounded like. “Yeah, it’s me.” The words come out like a cheap imitation, but Felix is used to being second-best. “I”m right here Ingrid.”

He can’t see her face, but he can feel the grateful kiss she presses into his neck that was never meant for him. “Glenn... we’ll be together now. Death isn't sad, not... really.”

“You can’t die yet Ingrid,” Felix chokes out, sounding nothing like his brother and even less than himself. 

She mutters something incoherent after that and Felix curses as he feels her body go limp in his hold. Her raspy breath in his ear is his only comfort, telling him she’s still alive, and he clings to it like a lifeline as he carries her to safety.

After her miraculous recovery they never speak of it again. But sometimes, during the quiet moments that are few and far in between, Felix catches her staring at him with a look in her eyes that he can’t quite read and he wonders if she ever figured out it wasn’t Glenn who spoke to her.

  
  
  
**5\. (Depression)**

Felix is twenty-two and Dimitri is alive, looking half a corpse and half a god. But not the benevolent kind, no. He looks like Duma from Glenn’s scary bedtime stories, raving about vengeance and righteous murder into the deep dark night.

He thought his friend had died a decade ago along with his brother. Perhaps he was wrong because the thing he sees in front of him now has far less humanity left than the boy who slaughtered dozens during the uprising with a bloodthirsty smile on his face. Felix tries not to wallow in the regrets of yesterday and instead keeps an eye on a man he once called the other half of his soul.

_ (It’s rotten work, fighting for someone who doesn’t even see you, but someone has to do it so it might as well be them.) _

Then one night, he hears a sound he hasn’t heard in years; the sound of Dimitri sobbing softly.

Felix knows better than to approach a feral animal and yet his legs move on their own until he’s standing in front of Dimitri. And indeed it wasn’t his imagination. Pale moonlight filters in through the broken roof of the Cathedral, illuminating a King of a fallen nation, crying pitifully in his sleep. 

Felix scoffs to himself. _ Pathetic _. And yet, some childhood memories still linger, buried deep but never deep enough, when he kneels down in front of the sleeping man and reaches out to him. 

“... Dima?” The word feels older than time, and Felix wants to take it back before it has properly passed his lips. For a moment it seems as if the goddess has granted him mercy and the Boar sleeps too deep for him to notice his slip-up. Felix should know better by now than to hope for luck, and a singular, hauntingly blue eye shoots open.

“Glenn, _ please _, I will avenge you. Please, allow me a moment’s rest. I promise, I promise….,” Dimitri begs him, looking him in the eyes for the first time in years and still not recognizing him. 

Felix sighs deeply and averts his eyes. The anger welling up in him is more like an old friend and a stalwart companion than anything else, but while it once filled him with energy it now leaves him barren.

He doesn’t scream, doesn’t slam his fists into the Boar’s face until he calls out the right name. He just sits there, and wonders out loud; “Does anyone even still remember what my brother was really like, instead of the saint my old man makes him out to be, or the corpse you’re clinging to? Does anyone even remember what he looked like, if people keep confusing me for him?”

Dimitri blinks slowly, the still half asleep. “Glenn, what are you talking about? Did… did something happen to Felix?” The one eye that remains twitches maddeningly, and searches his face for answers Felix cannot give. “I promise I didn’t hurt him, I promise!”

Felix doesn’t stick around to hear what else he promises to his long-departed brother, and speeds up his retreat once Dimitri starts regains enough of his senses to call his name. He knows that despite his prickly demeanor, his caring brother would never have asked for anyone’s head on a pike. 

But why, if he knew all along that Dimitri was long dead, do his words still hurt him so?

  
  


**+1 (Grief)**

Felix is twenty-four when he sees his brother’s reflection looking back at him in the mirror. Glenn looks tired and mean, nothing like the brother he remembers. His father’s cloak looks heavy on his shoulders, and yet it fits him like a glove. His hair is as short as it had been briefly before he died, but that’s not what draws his gaze.

There are tears in his brother’s eyes, just a few drops trailing down his cheeks. He looks broken and lost, a look so foreign on that face that it pulls him further into the illusion.

“Glenn…,” he whispers, his throat dry as he reaches out towards his brother, the longing in his chest heavier than it has ever been. 

The image twists into the face of his father, skin as pale as the day Felix lowered him into the ground. It isn’t until his fingertips touch the cold surface of the mirror that he remembers where he is.

_ Who _he is.

His brother’s eyes had been blue, just like their father’s. The face in the mirror twists in agony and the cry that wretches from his lips can be nobody’s but his own. He sobs loudly and rips the mirror off the wall and throws it on the ground. It shatters into a thousand pieces, each of them reflecting his own face back at him mockingly.

He falls to his knees and sobs until his tears run out, feeling both hollow and lighter at the same time. What scares him is the fact that he had forgotten what his brother looked like, if only for a second. What scares him more is how much he looks like his father, and how easily it is to make the same mistakes. 

What scares him the most is that for a fleeting moment, he felt happier than he has in weeks, perhaps months. Who is the gravekeeper now?

Felix grows his hair out again after that, and never replaces the mirror. The people that remember Glenn become fewer every year.

**Author's Note:**

> The five stages of grief aren't linear, and neither is recovery. Remember that when you feel like giving up.
> 
> Felix is probably my favorite character in three houses because there is just so much delicious potential for family drama and as you all know, I thrive on that. I hope you enjoyed this fic! The goal was to capture Felix's (terrible) way of dealing with the death of his loved ones and the way he forever feels like he lives in his brother's shadow. One of the most heartbreaking things of the blue lions run in my opinion is the fact that Felix never gets to reconcile with his father. Dimitri gets his (admittingly great) redemption arc as the main lord, but I was aching for some vulnerable moments like Mercedes got when her brother died.
> 
> Still, thanks for reading. This is not the last fic I will write for this fandom (or on this topic, probably), as I haven't been this inspired in years to write. Let me know what you thought here by leaving a comment, or go stalk me on Tumblr (ingrimasname).


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